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I sometimes notice the text ads on gmail, and often think to myself google are very smart in matching my email content to relevant ads.
Until today….
I’m not sure what ads for bloating and gas say about what google makes of the content of my email inbox…
So sometimes people will say that it is not the place of Christians to fight for justice, to fight against structural injustice in governments or trade systems, or to be green warriors crusading for the environment. Our task is for the higher purpose of tending to people’s souls. I’ve long had problems with this, and yes I am caricaturing a little but to be honest very little. The problem with taking such an approach is that it is verging on dualism, on even gnosticism. It implies that all that matters is the ’spiritual’, the physical world is bad and will be burned up so lets concentrate on the spiritual. It sounds reasonable in some ways. But stop and think about it for a moment. Why did Jesus rise bodily from the dead? If the physical is not important surely he would simply have risen as a spirit? Why did he go to such lengths like eating, and having people touch him to show that he was a real physical person? Is it not because in the resurrection we see that God desires to restore the physical creation?
Take another perspective. We all recognise that we will never be completely holy until Jesus returns. Does this mean we give up on pursuing holiness? The same in terms of care of creation and justice. Yes we will not restore them completely, that will only happen when Jesus returns, but that doesn’t mean that there is little we can do so we don’t bother. Jesus announced that God’s kingdom had come. Jesus came to demonstrate what life in God’s kingdom – as God would have it – was like. He calls us to do the same. He asks us to pray ‘your kingdom come, your will be done, on earht as it is in heaven’, so of course we are to pursue the care of creation and justice, because when in those small moments when we see justice, or people are stewarding God’s good creation as He called us to, there are glimpses of God’s kingdom as it will be. It inspires us with the hope of what is to come. It shows people what God is like, and his plan for redemption and restoration covers every part of life. We are not disembodied souls being whisked off to the clouds, we are real flesh and blood, feeling people, living in a physical environment. Everything is God’s. He is restoring everything. and obviously humans are the pinnacle of that restoration. Just because I believe God calls us to pursue justice and care for creation doesn’t mean I am not passionate about god restoring and reconciling people to himelf as part of that.
when we talk and think about these things, let’s make sure our thinking is joined up and not fragmented. Lets not slip into simply reacting against someone else and going to the extremes. Let’s have a big view of a huge God that is holistic.
(Can you tell what I am currently reading?)
Being back in the office instead of my wanderings around the island I’ve started to get the bus again. 25 minutes is a good time, although to read I’d appreciate a bit longer. It does provide perfect people watching opportunities. This morning I was struck by how the demographic of Belfast has changed, especially in terms of racial diversity (if that’s the correct PC phrase). Other things that stuck me:
The feeling of smug ‘I’m doing more for the planet than you’ sitting on the bus looking out particularly at drivers of 4WDs – particularly essential for the rough terrain of the Lisburn Road and City Centre. Then remembering how much I need to drive for work, feeling slightly hypocritical, and wondering why I have such a bias against drivers of larg
e vehicles
Bus drivers either must be changing or have been through customer service training recently. Often they were known for grunting and grumpiness (that may be a slight exaggeration, but they certainly have never been the most cheerful of people in my experience). The drivers of both my journeys on Friday and this morning all thanked me as I got off. I doubt I was causing so much trouble – or such a smell that they couldn’t wait to get me off their bus. It did strike me that such a simple act has actually made a difference to my days, Stunned by a couple of words – simple pleasantries, but nonetheless they definitely helped my day off to a much more cheerful start than some of my usual days stumbling into the office not quite awake with a little morning grumpiness.
Thank you Translink with your pink buses – you definately make my journeys to work more interesting.
No I’m not leaving wordpress. After a summer of travelling – a final update on that m
ay come, the time has finally come when my housemate (and landlord) is getting married, and the soapbox is turfed out one the street. Well to another street at least.
There is much to blog about from recent weeks and months, a long awaited follow up to ‘any women on the go’ perhaps, there will be something on Palestine after hearing lots of interesting stuff on that topic, and the fabulous Greenbelt at which Miss Beth Rowley, Brian Houston and beer and hymns in the ‘Jesus arms’ were all highlights. Philip Yancey and Brian McLaren weren’t bad either. But alas I am packing up my life. I’m shocked to discover how many books I posess. They take up so much more room out of bookshelves as well. Moving does force you to be a little ruthless with some of your possessions – our blue bin is rapidly filling and the local second hand bookshops may soon be overflowing. There is something incredibly therapeutic about getting rid of stuff – I remember crookedshore once giving some fascinating insights on decluttering and it reminding us not to put down too deep roots. Living out of a rucksack for 2 months also reminded me that I really can live so much more simply with less clutter, less clutter (and probably less time online) leaving more time for some of that soul (in the full sense of all compassing – can you tell i’m reading NT Wright?) enriching time with people, time to think, read, reflect and dream…
I head off in a couple of days to Peru, back for the second year with a team of students from across Ireland, to work with our Peruvian counterparts – AGEUP . We’ll be working with christian student groups in Lima, helping run an English camp, helping out in some of AGEUP’s long term community development work in Caraballyo – the shanty town we had the privilege of spending time in last year. It’s part of a familar story of cities across the two thirds world, where those from the countryside come to try and find jobs in the city, in Lima’s case a city of 11 million people. San Martin is the little community in the area of Caraballyo where we worked last year, it doesn’t ahve electricity or running water, its beside a rubbish dump, which the children play in, yet there is a sense of life and community which we don’t have here.
We’ll also be spending a week in Huancavelica – a town in the mountains badly hit by last year’s massive earthquake where the soapbox and his cohorts will be putting our minimal construction skills to use helping AGEUP with some of the reconstruction they are doing as they work to bring hope and life not just to students but to communities across Peru. It’s around 3700m so the atlitude will affect us a little no doubt, but i was most disturbed to find out that the night-time temperature at the minute is -5!
Once again we are flying with (dirty) Delta, and with a 2 hour turnaround in Atlanta i’m anticipating we won’t be seeing our bags for a couple of days. Change of clothes in the hand luggage all the way!
I’m hoping to post a few updates of what we get up to, what we are learning and some stories of the people we will meet. Hopefully there won’t be any dog incidents this year.
For those of you who are the praying sort, we’d appreciate those prayers as we trave, try and speak spanish, love each other well as a team, and those we meet, and as we serve alongside AGEUP in the amazing stuff they are doing, and especially for Emily and I as we lead the team.
The team are myself, Emily, Lisa, Nathan, Claire, Louise, Philip, Denise, Gillian, Charlotte and Warren.
Chelsea appear to be slipping out of the title race, so its time for more of those theological musings.
[oops - classic example of leaving the stadium (or BBC live text commentary) too soon]
I’ve been beginning to think about what the gospel is recently (post to come on that), but my feeling is (especially after church this morning) that in trying to make the gospel easily understood we perhaps condense it down too much and make it less than the glorious message of the kingdom that it is.
This has come out of lots of debate – some of it over at transfarmer about speaking the good news (what we seem to like to call evangelism) and living the good news (justice/social action etc). As we try to understand the wondrous complexity of the mission of God it often seems that we spend too much time trying to separate and systemise things that should be held in tension. Could it be we need to step back and understand how we think? Much of our way of thinking and desire to separate, categorise and neatly explain everything comes from Greek and Roman thought, so introducing problems as we come to the Bible and what for a large part is Hebrew thought. The Jews/Hebrews seemed to have no problem holding things in tension, not seeing them as mutually exclusive. Indeed they seemed to have a much more holistic view of life – that which we separate out as body, mind, soul, spirit. This is helpful in the whole mission debate if we are to understand something incredibly holistic, where things are held and lived together in creative tension. The importance of properly holding things in tension was reinforced recently when I was reading Tom’s Wright’s fantastic (and short) Judas and the Gospel of Jesus. He speaks a lot of dualism and Gnosticism, as I read I was frightened by how much dualism has crept into the church today as often the sacred and secular, spiritual and material, body and spirit are wrongly separated.
It perhaps is also indicative of the paucity of the English language that uses one word for things which have 3, 4 or more words all with different nuances in other languages. This is obvious in Spanish let alone Greek and Hebrew. We really do get ourselves into trouble with language at times, not in the sense of excessive swearing but in the ambiguity of so much of our language and the different nuances the same word can have with different people depending on your background, experience etc. How are we to work with that – do we simply use the words we like or prefer with abandon, mopping up the wreckage afterwards, or do we think carefully about how our language may be understood or misunderstood, and explain carefully to create clarity?
Hard to believe its almost a month since I last posted, although I have been keeping up the 365. Part of the lack of posting has been busyness and not actually making time to think, which I have missed, and too much time stuck at a computer. A few days back on the bus, starting back to class with a missiology module, the mind your head event, and reading the brilliant ‘Kite Runner’ has helped considerably though.
One of the things we have been looking at in missiology is the scope of the salvation story – remembering that although personal salvation and eternal destiny are important parts of it, they are not all of. I get really annoyed by people who try to make something complex all about one thing – the whole penal substitution debate is possibly in some ways an example of making orthodoxy about one aspect instead of recognising there are a few things all to be held in tension. People are also pretty quick to try to label people these days. Perhaps one of the problems of the reformation is the continual fracturing so we have no concept of the ‘one holy catholic apostolic’ church anymore. Evangelicals especially seem often to have completely lost some of the ‘one’ concept and seem to spend all the time defining themselves over and against everyone else. If you don’t hold tightly to the exact formulation of whatever doctrine it is is being discussed you get labelled a liberal. Which brings to mind the ‘don’t throw the word liberal at me as a dirty word speech’ from series 7 of the West Wing.
[UPDATE - on labels check this out from the wonderful Real Live Preacher]
When it comes to integral mission, it still frustrates me that some people seem to read the bible with blinkers, and can’t see that mission in its truest sense is a holistic thing. Insisting that social justice, environmental concern etc is part of God’s reconciling the whole of creation just seems to get me labelled as a liberal. Which I probably wear as a badge of honour because I’m stubborn. But the fundamental problem I am becoming convinced off, (and I don’t mean this in a superior way, and realise this post has been a bit facetious so far, so I apologise) is that too often we simply have too small a view of God. To read Colossians 1 and realise God isn’t just interested in reconciling humans but reconciling and restoring the entirety of creation is to have your view of God enlarged. So maybe in these debates as we wrestle we need to be asking ourselves not how we can write someone else off to make ourselves feel superior, but how big is our view of God in it all? and I sign off with a large dose of humility realising that I too am guilty of what I am railing against others for too often…
We live in an instant society, life is incredibly busy, we rush from meeting to meeting, from home to work to gym to meet people to catch favourite TV show to bed. We rarely stop. Stop simply to notice, to be aware of the moments of beauty and grace. Stop and pause not to moan or complain but to be thankful for those holy moments when God breaks through the noise and we hear his whisper. To see the good.
365 is a blogging movement that recognises that this stopping and pausing – recognising the moments of grace, the things to be thankful for, the moments of beauty doesn’t come naturally, but needs to be practised, to be learned and that’s what we are trying to do, trying to learn. Even on the worst days, to stop and look. It began with hoveactually and is spreading. Even the Soapbox is pausing from ranting to be thankful, so too smallcorner and lilytodd. Carrie O’Hara is also charting the good and inspiring, but also venting the bad, although I predict it may skew towards the former. Its not easy, it is a discipline that’s an easier road when walked together, so join in, and keep us going.
Another variation on the theme is the mockingbird’s leap opening with this fantastic quote by Annie Dillard
“beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. The least we can do is try to be there”
It’s a project for the advent season -in the run up to Christmas – the coming of the ultimate gift of Jesus – its an attempt to pay attention to the gifts of each day:
“People watching and waiting for something wonderful, even as we wait during Advent for the appearance of the Christ Child.
So that in the midst of the pimping of the season we are attentive to his coming.”
Who am I?
A couple of things have been going on recently. The first seemingly innocuous. I met up with Vox to start sorting out a pension. As I’m about to hit the third decade (although technically i’m already in it) its time to think wisely about the future. Part of me did think, im getting a pension, that’s me sorted, the future is secure. In my mind my security was being placed more in finance than God, it was my attitude and the placing of my security there that is the issue, not the fact i’m being sensible.
Secondly and perhaps more importantly I changed job over the summer, well changed role within the same organisation (or movement to change the world as i like to think of it). As the newness wore off after a couple of months, I’ve been experiencing a sense of loss. The loss of some of the things I’ve been doing over the last seven years, a quarter of my life so far. The relationships I had built. The feeling of being needed by the students I was working with. Many of the parts of that role fitted with who I am and gave me expression of those gifts, skills and abilities. The time was right for a change but I loved what I was involved in. Perhaps my identity became wrapped up in my role, so as I changed role, as a new season in life comes, I have begun to question who I am. Had I become what I was doing – was my identity defined by what I was doing as opposed to who I was? As I explore new avenues I am feeling that sense of loss but it has also made me question whether my identity had become based on my doing as opposed to being? Maybe this time is a time for a rebuilding of proper foundations, of being as opposed to being defined by doing…How much of our doing is an expression of our being and where does the balance lie?
The line of an old prayer I have used often, and seemed particularly relevant came back to me:
O Jesus, meek and humble of heart, hear me.
Deliver me Jesus….
…from the desire of being of being consulted….
Much like whynotsmile I must issue an apology regarding my previous post. The helpful people at my bank have now sorted out my problems. It now seems there were in fact no bandits thieving from my account. Some company has a sort code and account number only one digit different from mine and someone got a number wrong, thus the money left my account and not theirs. I am now able to breathe a sigh of relief regarding my banking security. I then did begin to (obviously as a result of living in a litigious blame culture) think “flip someone’s incompetence could have cost me a huge sum of money, what about my phone calls to the bank (a grand total of 3) and distress caused to me (here I was beginning to take on the vocabulary of the said blame culture and exaggerate something that gave me something to talk about but certainly didn’t lose me any sleep). When I took a step back and got some perspective – I realised that someone made a mistake, and here was me getting up on my high horse talking about incompetence and wanting to see what I could get out of the bank. I got my money back, which should have made me thankful enough that I had money to be taken out of my account. I make mistakes every day, and when I do its just a mistake, but when its other people its a flaw in their character, its a trait, its incompetence. I really can be an arrogant git. Much like my encounter with the police here I am again looking to make myself feel superior to someone else – who got one number wrong – big deal. I’ve been reading through the gsopels and realise that Jesus must have been so good to be around. Instead of shooting others down to make himself look important (well he certainly did remind some of the more arrogant of a few home truths) he saw where they were at, he saw things from their perspective and gave people dignity and lifted them up. It must have be so liberating. That’s what I want to be like, instead of someone so insecure at times I need to prove my worth by showing how superior I am to others when in reality i’m no different, constantly making mistake, and needing grace, the grace I maybe need to start demonstrating to others…
confessions
